It's a Family Tradition

The Internet was not happy when it was announced that Jim Mickle, who made his name (along with co-writer/muse Nick Damici) on original low-budget genre films Mulberry Street and Stake Land, would take the perceived easy horror route in remaking a small foreign hit. 

The Internet is rarely happy.

Mulberry Street and Stake Land demonstrated true talent and innovation from Mickle. Both were made cheaply but managed to feel much bigger (in Stake Land's case, epic) and more importantly, both films showed that Mickle didn't just understand how to craft a good horror movie; he had a fresh outlook in re-envisioning age-old monsters with new eyes. The films were original in more ways than just not being based on preexisting material. From his penchant for using diverse actors of every age to his heavy endings, Mickle was bringing it.

Jorge Michel Grau's 2010 We Are What We Are made festival waves for its unique story and style. It seemed an odd choice for Mickle to remake it, but something in the material seemed to call him. Let’s see what it was.

Quick Plot: Meet the Parkers, a sad little family moping around rainy Delaware with some secret traditions placed firmly in their heritage. When mom dies suddenly, eldest daughter Iris is charged with continuing the Parker way for her quietly intimidating father, thoughtful 14-year-old sister Rose, and adorable little brother.

Revealing the family tradition is something of a spoiler, though unfortunately, it's the kind of spoiler that everyone who sees a trailer or reads a 10-word blurb about the film will know. So let's ask Gandalf for his official sanction:

And move onto what you probably know this movie is about anyway.

Little known fact about eating human flesh: it can lead to a Parkinson's-like condition detectable in autopsies. Doc Barrow (the fine Michael Parks) picks up on the fact when examining Emma Parker. That plus the discovery of a human bone leads the good doctor to do what the local cops are apparently incapable of: solving a whole lot of missing persons reports that all lead back to the Parkers.

Like their Spanish counterparts, the Parkers have an odd family tradition. Way back in 1781, their great great (and let's just guess one more great) grandparents were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive brutal colonial winters. Two hundred plus years later, the Parkers now host an annual 'Lambs Day,' wherein the matriarch carves up a homo sapien for a hearty stew dinner. Now that Iris is the eldest female, it's up to the next generation to follow or challenge the holiday requirements. 

We Are What We Are is a carefully paced film. To some, this probably means 'slow and boring,' and for me, it almost was until it wasn't. The big C doesn't come out until far into the film, something that's a bit of a trick when it's obvious to anyone who's read a single line about the movie. But We Are What We Are isn't ACTUALLY about people eating people, or the game that goes along with catching your two-legged dinner. 

The Parkers aren't happy, particularly young Iris and Rose. They've grown up knowing their family's secret isn't normal but lacking the will to fight it. It's a great little subject to examine in horror movie format: what does it take to challenge mindless tradition, particularly when it's inherited by family ties? We Are What We Are asks these questions, albeit in a quiet, suggested way. Coming from the same team that brought rat zombie vampire people to Little Italy, it’s quite impressive to see how the Mickle/Damici pair can handle such different styles of genre storytelling, even if it's done in a, you know, kind of slow way.

High Points

It's inevitable that I'll approve of the characters and performances in a Mickle/Damici script. Both Stake Land and Mulberry Street proved that this team cares about the people they put in their movies, and We Are What We Are is no different on that front. 

Low Points

It was already a bummer to see Mickle's cohort Damici only taking a supporting role, but when supporting role is further reduced to 'town sheriff who seems less capable than the mentally handicapped police officers in The Human Centipede,' it's even more grumble worthy

Lessons Learned

The night of her mom's funeral is generally not the best time to ask a girl out for a casual date

Nothing flows upstream

Everything might taste like chicken, but certain meat sure does look like unfortunate ladies with car trouble

Rent/Bury/Buy

My disappointment with We Are What We Are comes mostly from my expectations of the filmmaking team. I though Stake Land demonstrated such a monstrous level of skill and instinct that I just want so much for their films to continuously improve. We Are What We Are is a very good little genre film, one that takes its time and subtly examines what tradition means and how problematic it can be to blindly follow the religious or social requirements you were born into without questioning their place. It's just not the film I wanted from the guys who managed to give us NYC on the brink of collapse on a tiny budget or an apocalyptic wasteland with heart with a slightly less tiny budget. Now streaming on Instant Watch, this is a recommend, and a film that might sit better with me the next time around. In the meantime, I’ll just accept that I am what I am.

A For Effort. Eh For Execution

I've said it time and time again: setting your genre film in the olden days will automatically make it more interesting. Aside from removing the annoyingly obligatory "No service!"shout-out, a pre-automobile driven society gives way to more tension, more limitations, and an environment even less fit to fight supernatural horrors than the one we all know.

In other words, I added the new Bloody Disgusting release Exit Humanity to my queue because it was a Civil War era zombie film. What could go wrong?

Quick Plot: Narrated by an always welcomed Brian Cox, Exit Humanity is assembled from the diary of Edwin Young (a solid Mark Gibson), a battle-scarred soldier who caught a glimpse of the undead while shooting the other side on the mountains of Tennessee. Six years later, he experiences new horrors when he returns from a hunting trip to find his wife and son zombified, as well as a good portion of the nearby community. Edwin embarks upon his own mission to research and exterminate the new population of flesh-eaters, eventually venturing out to spread his son's ashes at a peaceful waterfall that soothed him during the war. 

Along the way, Edwin befriends Isaac, a fellow zombie hunter looking for his sister, who has been kidnapped by a rogue group of Confederates (led by genre stalwart Bill Mosely) using a tired medic (Pontypool's Stephen McHattie) to work on a cure. Edwin, Isaac, and his sister Emma escape to find solace in a local healer's home (played by Dee Wallace, and yes, the genre cred meter just burst).

Let's examine what we have so far:

-A fascinating and underused time period

-A superb cast of proven horror actors

-Zombies

Mixing these ingredients should yield a pretty delicious pie, right? 

Well...

Written and directed by John Geddes, Exit Humanity is an ambitious film, one that clocks in at nearly 110 minutes and feels determined to make you feel each one. With Jeff Graville, Nate Kreiswirth, and Ben Nudds' soaring score and the sometimes pretentious narration, Exit Humanity is certainly aiming for epic status. But unlike something like Stakeland (which FELT big even on a small budget), the elements of this film never quite add up to something as grandiose as it wants to be. Gibson is a strong lead, but too much of the early scenes are devoted to Edwin screaming at God, while later montage-ish sequences that are supposed to show developing relationships never resonate with any true depth. Though we get some strong zombie chases here and there, the undead seem to randomly fade in and out as an actual threat. Part of what makes a historical-set horror film so effective is knowing that antiquated weaponry and technology might not be advanced enough to handle the threat. But in Exit Humanity, rarely do the shuffling hordes of extras even feel that dangerous.

That being said, Exit Humanity has to be admired for some of its more unique touches. Throughout the film, Geddes interjects expressionistic style animation, presumably as drawings from Edwin's journal. The artwork is quite striking, even if its more modern look never quite gels with the 19th century feel of the rest of the film.

Based on its premise and cast, I wanted to like Exit Humanity and by golly, I just, well, kind of didn't. The film looks quite good, with its woodsy setting never tipping its Confederate hat to reveal a low budget. Lots of credit does go to Geddes for taking his time to create something unique to the zombie genre without ever settling for easy gore. Unfortunately, the incredibly labored pacing just never clicked for me. The sentiment was there, but while the landscape and soundtrack worked so hard to establish Edwin's crew's misfortunes, I just never cared enough about them as individuals to stay involved with the molasses moving narrative.

High Points

Dude: it's the 1870s!

Low Points

...a time when movies took themselves far too seriously

Lessons Learned

There ain’t no cure for monstrous behavior

Leather jackets have always been in style, be it 1987 or 1871

As Cold Mountain already taught us, one could not find better healthcare in the 19th century than in the secluded forest cabin of a female hermit

Rent/Bury/Buy

I don't want to discourage anyone from checking out Exit Humanity. I give Geddes a lot of credit for tackling a tired genre with a fresh approach, and between the surprisingly strong production value, reliable cast, interesting artwork, and an extras-loaded DVD, the film offers quite a lot for horror fans with an appreciation for something new. Overall, it didn't quite work for my tastes, but this is a better than average straight-to-DVD horror movie that could certainly please plenty of viewers. I feel bad not being one.

Road Trip, Rogue Vampire Hunter Style

Going into Stake Land, there was a pile of reasons why my expectations were higher than Miley Cyrus at a backyard barbeque held at Cheech Marin’s casa. Amongst them:

-Director Jim Mickle and actor/cowriter Nick Damici’s previous outing, Mulberry Street, was an impressively refreshing low budget horror that used a standard premise--vampirish zombies chewing through New York City--and made it into something truly new, with a multi-aged cast and hauntingly effective portrait of post-9/11 Manhattan.

-The fact that it’s a post-apocalyptic survival tale, something that never fails to rock my world (even when directed by the humorless Michael Haneke)

-Proven history: The last time I watched a movie starring a Gossip Girl star for this site, the result was the beyond magnificent Drive-Thru

Quick Plot: As a plague of vampirism spreads through the world, human survivors get by with whatever tools they choose to trade, be it guns, shantytown politics, or crazy religious cult gang membership pent on worshipping monsters and raping nuns. Eking out existence in the south is Martin (Connor Paolo), an orphaned teenager who watched his parents and baby sibling get eaten and has since been learning under the tutelage of Mister (Damici), a badass vampire hunter who smokes and sleeps his way through the makeshift communities. Eventually, they collect a few more traveling teammates, including the aforementioned nun Sister (Kelly McGillis), the ex-soldier Willie (Sean Nelson) and the sunnily pregnant Belle (genre queen Danielle Harris).

So yes, this is a film that opens with a savage vampire zombie chewing on an infant. It’s actually a strong way to begin, since Stake Land is indeed a brutal and dark ride that digs into the worst of both monsters and mankind. Besides baby-eating (sorry; I know it’s not funny, but it also kind of is) there are not-so-subtle hints towards sexual slavery, domestic terrorism, and slain children, all of which is handled with the kind of weight they need.

Stake Land is essentially a road movie set after the apocalypse, a sort of genre take on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road with more, well, vampires. As is common for many a serious-minded horror film, it quickly reveals that it’s man rather than monster that plays the real villain in life. Like Mulberry Street, there’s some not-so-deeply buried social commentary that never overtakes the action. The government has given up, leaving some citizens to sympathetically form communities and others to turn world-wide disaster into their own hedonistic utopia. 

Most notable is Stake Land’s portrayal of religion, something that’s done with far more evenhandedness than you might expect. Yes, the major bad guys are racist and misogynist zealots (led by Broadway powerhouse Michael Cerveris) who force their hateful beliefs on the country through violence, but the film seems to strive for a balance with other nods that point to faith as a comfort. McGillis' Sister is a solid force, a woman who offers the flip side of faith as something that breeds kindness and sympathy. Too often films like these end up painting religion as the true evil of the world through broad and stereotypical strokes or on the flip side, end up as weird exercises in Christian entrapment (see I Am Legend). Stake Land wisely avoids either fatal misstep.

And really that's just one of many things I absolutely loved about this film. The performances are all quite good, with each actor lending the right balance of battle-torn weariness with a subtle ray of hope. Harris brightens up every scene she's in, while Damici offers outstanding presence with very little dialogue. As the everyman lead, Connor Paolo is surprisingly effective, never overplaying the role but maintaining the center as a boy coming of age with the right balance of innocence and maturity. While I would normally see character narration as unnecessary and distracting, it works well in Stake Land, never overstepping the action or telling us anything we already know. Would the film work without it? Most likely, but the lines lend a certain gravity that always reminds us what world we're now living (and dying) in. 

High Points

It’s a testament to Stake Land that the actual vampires are far less important than the rest of the narrative, but they’re still something to be acknowledged. Considering Mulberry Street’s main weakness was its iffy execution of its rat-like zombies, allow me to give a nod to the vampiric creations here, especially with their different styles based on time of infection

Low Points

While I didn’t need any backstory regarding what began the plague, it was a tad frustrating to realize that I had no idea how the virus even worked in terms of contagion

Lessons Learned

No man should begin his vampire hunting career without proper armor and headgear

When choosing one's vehicle for vampire hunting in the post-apocalypse, always consider the mechanics of the trunk

In the post-apocalypse, a round of square dancing is considered more appealing than a vanilla ice cream cone

Soap Box Special

You may, as I did, experience a mild shock when you realize that the 50something nun is played by Witness and Top Gun hottie Kelly McGillis. Yes, seeing an actress primarily known for her work three decades ago now looking all of her 54 years is initially surprising, but I've been even more astounded by how many Interwebbers are citing her look in this film as 'old and ugly.' First of all, she's playing a nun barely surviving in a post-apocalyptic world, meaning her Botox sessions and salon appointments have probably been canceled indefinitely. Secondly, her face is still quite stunning, offering plenty of warmth and depth considering she most often has to act without words. Most importantly, she looks absolutely fine for a woman in her 50s, though by 'fine' I mean 'what an actual woman in her 50s should look like.' And people wonder why actresses keep drinking virgins' blood at plastic surgeons' offices.

Unlike some people...

Rent/Buy/Buy

I’d been hearing about Stake Land for the past year or so, as it’s made quite a dent in the horror community. To me, the film most certainly deserves its indie gem reputation. It works as a monster movie, with plenty of effective action-heavy vampire attacks, and it absolutely soars as an apocalyptic road trip hybrid. The DVD includes two commentaries, while the Blu Ray and 2-disc Special Edition are loaded with a making-of, Q&A, and seven character prequels (also viewable on youtube). Though some of my fellow bloggers have been unimpressed, I found Stake Land to be well worth a viewing and even, if you’re feeling financially frisky or just plain wild, a blind buy. 

Settle down now.